9 Crooked Cops Who Became Criminals Themselves
Robert Smith, The Racist Cop Sentenced To Eight Years For Bribery And Drug Schemes
Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesRobert Smith and two other NYPD officers partook in a scheme in which they sold the personal information of car crash victims to private businesses.
Robert Smith was never subtle about his misdeeds in the New York Police Department.
As the The New York Daily News reported, Smith had called himself “one of the most corrupt cops in the 105” — his precinct in Queens.
By the time he retired from the force in 2020 at the age of 45, he had accepted $20,000 in bribes scamming car crash victims, along with two fellow cops, by directing them to a specific towing company while receiving cash from the company — a clear violation of NYPD protocol.
They also stole the data of those car crash victims and gave it to third parties, who sold the information to physical therapy businesses. By the end of their scheme, they had sold the information of over 100 people and collected $7,000 in cash kickbacks between January and March 2020.
Of course, Smith didn’t stop there.
A document released by the Eastern New York District Attorney’s Office identified that after he retired, Smith ended up meeting with two undercover officers posing as narcotics dealers, expressing his interest in trafficking drugs. He also told them he would carry his gun and retired NYPD identification while he did it.
After that, he met with a third undercover cop who gave him what he believed to be a kilogram of heroin and delivered it to a fourth undercover officer in Queens for $1,200 cash.
The feds busted him and two other NYPD officers, Robert Hassett and Heather Busch, in 2021 — and also revealed that Robert Smith had always been belligerently racist throughout his career, frequently aiming his gun at Black civilians who passed him on the street just to see the looks on their faces.
“Bro,” he texted a friend. “I point my gun out the window now at n*ggers and watch their reaction and drive away. Hilarious.”
GoogleThe 105th Precinct in Queens where Robert Smith worked. Of the 33 civilian complaints raised about Smith, the NYPD substantiated one.
During his two-decade career, civilians levied 33 complaints against him to the NYPD Civilian Complaint Review Board, the first of which was filed in 2002, according to ProPublica. They accused him of excessive physical force, refusing to provide his badge number, and repeatedly making racist and sexist comments, including one complaint from 2014 in which he called a driver a “crazy monkey” and an “animal” before telling him to “go suck a cock,” according to The New York Daily News.
When Robert Smith appeared in court for his sentencing in April 2022, he was teary-eyed and weepy, according to The New York Daily News, saying, “I did wrong. I had no excuses for what I’ve done. I know I’ve done wrong and I know I deserve to go to prison.”
He also wasted no time in identifying other corrupt officers to the FBI.
His lawyer, Andrew Frisch, expects he’ll have a tough time in prison, writing in court documents that Smith “will be entering the Bureau of Prisons with two targets on his head: he’s a cop, and he’s a rat.”
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